President Donald Trump meets with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at the White House on Feb. 27, 2025.

WASHINGTON ― Donald Trump renewed a major first-term lie on Thursday in his continued defense of Vladimir Putin, falsely claiming that the Russian dictator did not help him win the presidency in 2016.

“We had to go through the Russian hoax together. That was not a good thing. That was not fair. That was a rigged deal and had nothing to do with Russia,” Trump told reporters at a White House photo opportunity with visiting British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

“They had to put up with it,” Trump said of Putin and his aides. “With a phony story that was made up.”

In fact, both special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and the Senate Intelligence Committee found that Putin made extensive efforts to help Trump win in 2016, most notably by having his spies steal emails from Democrat Hillary Clinton’s aides and then release them during the final month of the campaign through Russian ally WikiLeaks.

What’s more, Trump was informed by the FBI in August of that year that the emails had been stolen by Russia — just weeks after Trump had publicly asked Russia to........

© HuffPost